| 25. HAPPINESS
Little troubles are really not so bad -
for someone else.
Sholom Aleichem
What does a man need in order to be happy?
Only that his business should be just a little bit better than he
himself.
A. Arbuzov
Awareness of the wonderful that was within
grasp comes too late.
A. Blok
Happiness is when they understand you, but
you, yourself, don’t understand it.
Contemporary Saying
If you feel happy for over one day, that
means that something is being hidden from you.
Contemporary Saying
Happiness begins with the hatred for
misfortune, with the physiological distaste for everything that warps
and cripples people, with an inner loathing for everything that groans,
wails, and yearns for the tinseled well-being that is being
increasingly assailed by the tempest of history.
M. Gorky
Complete happiness doesn’t mix with
anxiety; complete happiness is as tranquil as the sea in the summer’s
calm.
A. Herzen
It isn’t worth the trouble to fear our own
fate,
So, it isn’t worth the trouble to pretend
that we are happy.
B. Okudjava
They say misfortune is a good school.
Perhaps, so. But good fortune is the best of universities.
A. Pushkin
If, as it is claimed by the humanitarians,
man was born only to be happy, then, then he would not have been born
to die as well.
A. Solzhenitsyn
People with great and beautiful souls are
always serene and satisfied; people with worthless souls are all
dissatisfied and sad.
L. Tolstoy
Both that which we call happiness, as well
as that which we call unhappiness, are equally useful to us if we look
upon the first and the second as upon the trial.
L. Tolstoy
A man is obligated to be happy; if he is
unhappy - he is guilty.
L. Tolstoy
To be happy one must first have faith that
happiness is possible.
L. Tolstoy
Happiness is pleasure without remorse.
L. Tolstoy
To do what you want is not happiness.
Happiness is to want what you do.
L. Tolstoy
Happiness is like health: you have it if
you don’t feel its absence.
I. Turgenev
Each little roof,
No matter how steep,
Hides its own happiness,
its
own fate,
its own treats.
I. Utkin
He is indeed a happy man who reconciles
himself with his present circumstances.
N. Gogol
People are unhappy because they don’t know
that they are happy.
F. Dostoevsky
People are unhappy only because they don’t
realize that they are happy.
F. Dostoevky
Bliss and envy are the nominator and the
denominator of the fraction called happiness.
Y.Zamyatin
26. HEALTH
The scorn of death prolongs life.
A. Bogomoletz
Sports is the physical culture driven to
the absurd.
Contemporary Saying
A healthy man is the most earthly man.
F. Dostoevsky
If I ever fall ill
I will shun the doctors for certain
I will say to my friends:
Take me away. Far:
in the steppeland make me a bed
With misty fog hung around like a curtain
And light me an evening star overhead as a
lamp..
Y. Smelyakov
Everyone says that health is the most dear
thing in life but noone abides by this.
L. Tolstoy
Happiness is like health: you have it if
you don’t feel its absence.
I.Turgenev
27. HISTORY
Noone at all interested in the study of
history could have failed to notice that there was always some great
material interest at the bottom of the most abstract, the most sublime,
idealistic, theological, and religious struggles.
M. Bakunin
The history of any nation is not only a
succession of events, but also a chain of ideas.
P. Chaadaev
It is impossible to know the true sense of
the present and the aims of the future unless you know the past.
M. Gorky
Man’s consciousness not only reflects the
objective world, but creates it.
V. Lenin
Historians are like deaf people who go on
answering questions that noone asks them.
L. Tolstoy
I would choose this epigraph to
history: “Conceal Nothing!” It is not enough to avoid direct
lies; try not to lie negatively, by omission.
L. Tolstoy
It is quite clear: the whole human history,
to the extent that we know it, is a history of a shift from the nomadic
forms of life to the more and more settled ones. Doesn’t it follow
then, that the more settled form of life is also the more perfected
one? If people used to rush about from one end of the earth to another,
then, it was only in the prehistoric times, when there were nations,
wars, trades, discoveries ofvarious Americas. But now, who needs all of
that now?!
Y.Zamyatin
28. HOME/HOMELAND
Emigration is something like going to
your own funeral, the only difference being that after your funeral
your nervous system calms down.
V. Aksyonov
Thank you, God, that I am in this land a
stranger!
I don’t blame anyone at all in this matter
And I easily breath that I parted with
noone!you, God! I no longer have a homeland!
J. Brodsky
It is not that the grass is greener on the
other side, but, rather, that the grass is not green at all where we
are.
Contemporary Saying
Every frog sings in its own swamp.
Proverb
Your own grief is dearer than someone
else’s joy.
Proverb
Your own shirt is always warmer.
Proverb
29. HOPE
Hope is a liar.
Sholom Aleichem
Day will come and the great will occur,
I can sense in the future, soul’s
passionate feat.
A. Blok
Is it really necessary to give hope if they
are not asking for it.
Contemporary Saying
It doesn’t matter, we’ve known all along,
our fate
is some rowdiness, some gunfire.
But, don’t you stop trying, Maestro,
Don’t take away your hand from your brow.
B. Okudjava
Gabriel blowing into his horn sends his
word not to us but to those marching instead of us.
V. Shklovsky
I hope constantly, I desire a lot, I expect
little.
Z.Zhabotinsky
30. HUNGER
Do you know that centuries will pass,
and mankind will proclaim with its mouth of wisdom and science that
there is no such thing as crime, and, therefore, no such thing as sin,
but there are only the hungry?
F. Dostoevsky
Hunger kicks even the wolf out of the
forest.
Proverb
If you go without dinner, pillow under your
head will quiver.
Proverb
A hungry belly is deaf to a wise advice.
Proverb
A belly is no sack, don’t stuff it for
tomorrow.
Proverb
Bread tames even the wildest beasts.
Proverb
Horseradish is no sweeter than radish.
Proverb
.
31. ILLUSION/REALITY
Donuts in a dream are not donuts, but a
dream.
Sholom Aleichem
When dreams come true, we always become a
bit sad.
A. Arbuzov
I never dreamt or wished for miracles,
And, you, as well, forget about them.
A. Blok
While a man enjoys a splash that a pike
makes, he is a poet; when, however, he knows that this splash is
nothing more than a chase of the stronger after the weaker, he is a
philosopher; but when he doesn’t understand the purpose of the chase,
and why an equilibrium which is reached through destruction is needed,
then, he is dumb and stupid again, as in his childhood. And the
more he doesn’t understand this, the dumber he is.
A. Chekhov
Reality keeps asserting the opposite.
Contemporary Saying
The higher a man’s outlook, the less he
sees under his own feet.
Contemporary Saying
In order to fall in love with a human
being, the latter needs to hide, for as soon as he reveals his face -
gone is love.
F. Dostoevsky
Beggars, especially the noble beggars,
should have never revealed their faces. They should have always asked
for charity hidden behind newspapers.
F. Dostoevsky
Precisely because we keep awake and live
during the daytime, we associate all kinds of miracles and mysteries
with the night. Precisely because the majority of the poets happened to
be men, a woman turned into a mysterious object of contemplation.
Meanwhile, Adam is no less riddlesome than Eve.
S. Levin
The most important thing about a donut is
its hole, because after you eat a donut, nothing’s left of it, while a
hole stays forever.
O. Mandelshtam
I do not believe in flowery Niece, once
again, I sing glory,
To men who are worn out like hospital
sheets,
to women,
ragged up like a trite old story.
V. Mayakovsky
When looking at the sun, squint your eyes,
and you will readily recognize spots upon it.
K. Prutkov
Sometimes, words typed in italics are many,
many times more unjust than those that are typed in regular print.
K. Prutkov
Where are those lime trees under which I
grew up? There are no such lime trees and there have never been.
V. Shklovsky
Light will always be light, although a
blind man doesn’t see it.
L. Tolstoy
If a bird runs around on its feet, that
doesn’t prove that it is against its nature to fly.
L. Tolstoy
Never will a writer invent anything more
beautiful than the truth.
Y.Tynyanov
32. INDIFFERENCE
Indifference is a paralysis of the soul,
a premature death.
A. Chekhov
Beware of indifference, for it is deadly
for the soul.
M. Gorky
Life is so devilishly artful that lacking
the ability of hating, neither can one love.
M. Gorky
Nothing is more dangerous than a man for
whom the human is foreign.
M.Saltykov-Schedrin
33.INDIVIDUALISM
People who are disallowed the most, are
people of independent, original thought, people who don’t fit into any
usual, routine categories.
N. Berdyaev
Every single man is world-scale by his
nature.
N. Berdyaev
You’d be satisfied with yourself and your
wife,
And serve your ragged constitution,
But, you see, poets have a different sort
of life,
And for them, there are never enough
constitutions.
A. Blok
I’m not taken with others’ satisfaction,
It’s only a jest in a noble direction.
I’m taken with inner perfection,
Midnight - half-a-bottle - lyre.
For me, trees are worth much more than
forests,
I don’t have any common interest,
But the speed of inner progress
Is faster than the speed of the universe.
J. Brodsky
If an individual agrees with everybody, he
lacks conviction; if he likes everybody and is everybody’s friend, he
is indifferent to one and all.
N. Dobrolyubov
Is the world to go to pot, or am I to have
my tea? I say that the world can go to pot, as long as I get my tea.
F. Dostoevsky
A canary with someone else’s voice
Is a pitiful and funny trinket.
World needs a melodic song,
So, sing your own way, even as a cricket.
S. Esenin
Eccentrics adorn life.
M. Gorky
Be it a little mind but be it your own.
M. Gorky
One cannot live in society and be free from
society.
V. Lenin
A tree - that’s a true miracle, but a
forest is merely a mirage.
S. Levin
Each man is like a letter in an alphabet:
in order to form a word, he needs to unite the others.
O. Mandelshtam
Individualism is emphasized weakness.
M. Prishvin
It is better to sing your own song even if
you are a quail, than to pretend that you’re a nightingale.
Proverb
No ideas, no love, no forgiveness, no
harmony, in brief, nothing that sages have devised from ancient to
modern times can justify the nonsense and absurdity in the fate of an
individual person.
L. Shestov
The willful God of the Bible created this
world, as they say, according to His own image; but this is said only
of Adam. Besides him, there also exist ants, elephants, giraffes. They
are not alike. But let’s not get angry at that! People are also not
alike!
V. Shklovsky
Stern people do not recognize the great
voice of their time. Echo returns it to them in an exalted state.
V. Shklovsky
Basically, an outstanding person, a person
of greatness, a person with rare and unexpected initiatives cannot let
himself be known; there would instantly be thousands of traps set up
against him. Thus, mediocrity rules under the mask of democratic
restraints.
A. Solzhenitsyn
The individual is inconceivable outside
society.
L. Tolstoy
Every person knows that he must do what
unites and not divides him and other people.
L. Tolstoy
Man is born to live by his own mind.
L. Tolstoy
There are no prophets in one’s homeland,
And other homelands aren’t rich with them,
alas!
V. Vysotsky
In ancient times, Christians understood
this: humility is a virtue and pride is a vice; “We” is from God,
whereas, “I” is from the devil.
Y.Zamyatin
34. JEWS
The real “Jewish question” is this :
from what can a Jew make a living?
Sholom Aleichem
Though Passover comes but once a year, Jews
ask questions all year long.
Sholom Aleichem
I went through a pogrom when I was a child
and survived. But they twisted the head off of my dove. Why?
I. Babel
- What has a Jew studied? -
- Bible -
- What does a Jew seek?
- Joy -
I. Babel
Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that
those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed
it so often engaged in crucifying others.
N. Berdyaev
In respect of polarization and
inconsistency, the Russian people can be paralleled only by the Jews;
and it is not a matter of chance that precisely in these two people
there exists a vigorous messianic consciousness.
N. Berdyaev
All, but the Yids.
Catherine The Great
(From a Bill of
Civil Rights)
For everything Jews are here to blame,
For liveliness, cleverness, spark.
For a Jewess who tried our Lenin to maim,
For the fact that she missed her mark.
Contemporary Saying
Sooner or later in the life of every Jew,
there comes a moment when he is hit by a dim concept: that he is Jewish.
N. Djin
Contradictions inherent in the world
culture - indeed, throughout history - are but a private argument
between four consecutive Jewish sages who slid their gaze down the
symbolic figure of man: the law-giver Moses deemed the brain most
important; Christ, that prophet of love, chose the heart; the economist
Marx, the stomach, and the psychologist Freud, ventured lower. Along
came the fifth, Einstein, who inferred “in confusion” that all is one
through relativity.
N. Djin
Everyone is a Jew. Only some people have
admitted to it, and others have not.
M. Svetlov
Judaism experienced the tragic fate of King
Lear!
S. Dubnov
Jewish nation has a strange fate; even when
people talk about the Jews, they do so differently than when they talk
about any other nation! In all of the wide-range literature dedicated
to the Jewish question, there reigns a sort of strange, rather romantic
overtone, instead of a serious one.
A. Idelson
The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not
as Jews but as bourgeoisie.
V. Lenin
The unifying fate of all the Jews makes
them a realistic group.
S. Levin
It is easier to imagine a Jew without an
exile than an exile without a Jew.
S. Levin
The only Czechoslovaks are the Jews: the
rest are either Czechs or Slovaks.
S. Levin
I apologize for the pogroms, but they help
sustain discipline in the army.
S. Petlyura
Antisemitism is a psychosis, and like any
other psychosis, it is hereditary and incurable.
L. Pinsker
Jews are chosen by universal hatred.
L. Pinsker
Beat the Yids! Save Russia!
Slogan
In those old, wild, barbarous days, when
neither life nor death of anyone counted for anything, Rabbi Akiba
openly condemned capital punishment, a practice recognized today as
highly uncivilized.
L. Tolstoy
“Love the stranger and the sojourner”, says
Moses, “because you have been strangers in the land of Egypt.” And this
was said in those remote, savage times when the chief ambition of races
and nations consisted in crushing and enslaving one another.
L. Tolstoy
Not long ago, I was reading a Sermon From
the Mount together with one rabbi. Almost after every verse, he would
stop and point out to me similar passages in the Old Testament or the
Talmud. When, however, we got to the words: “Don’t resist evil”, he,
instead of his usual: “we have that in the Talmud also”, asked me with
a smile: “Do Christians obey this commandment?” I did not say anything
in response, for, namely in those days, Christians, being far from the
idea of turning the other cheek, were slapping the Jews across both
cheeks.
L. Tolstoy
Only when the Jewish nation frees the Land
of Israel, will the land of Israel free the Jewish nation.
M. Usyshkin
Let the “International” thunder its might
when will be buried the last antisemite.
No Jewish blood my veins rushes through,
But I am hated with an encrusted passion,
By all antisemites, as if I were a Jew,
and because of that I am a genuine Russian.
Y.Yevtushenko
35. JOY
A joyful man is always right.
I. Babel
- What has a Jew studied? -
- Bible -
-What does a Jew seek? -
- Joy -
I. Babel
Let us rejoice at only that which is good!
Contemporary Saying
How superficial became the sense of deep
satisfaction!
Contemporary Saying
He is the most joyful man who is able to
lie to himself better than the rest.
F. Dostoevsky
Joy must be forgotten, sadness never.
M. Lermontov
It isn’t much equipped for merriment,
our world.
Let’s wrest
joy from the grips of a future day.
V. Mayakovsky
Pour laughter from one pair of eyes
to another,
Decorate black nights with white
weddings,
And cast joy from one flesh
to the other.
V. Mayakovsky
Life must be and can be an unceasing joy.
L. Tolstoy
If you do not conceive of life as a
tremendous joy, this is solely due to your mind being on the wrong
track.
L. Tolstoy
Strange that joy sometimes resembles grief,
and sad that grief never resembles joy.
P. Valyuev
36. JUDGMENT
Criticism would, of course, be a
terrible weapon if, fortunately, it were not itself subject to
criticism.
V. Belinsky
Man feels better when you show him what he
is really like.
A. Chekhov
Except for being born, he wasn’t accused of
anything blameworthy.
Contemporary Saying
If you keep saying that he is a swine, he
will finally grunt like one.
M. Gorky
The truth is above pity.
M. Gorky
And who is to judge?!
A. Griboedov
Be hard on yourself if you don’t want
others to be hard on you.
L. Leonov
You won’t escape people’s judgment,
Just as you won’t escape the judgment of
God.
A. Pushkin
If I had enough paint, I would make
everyone tainted.
Proverb
Our misfortune is that we consider other
people’s vices as our own virtues.
M. Svetlov
A man stops criticizing others as soon as
he conquers himself.
L. Tolstoy
He who has much knowledge knows how
cautious one must be to avoid error in expressing judgment. It is the
superficial dabbler who judges all things with extraordinary audacity.
L. Tolstoy
Only he who loves may scold or censor.
I.Turgenev
37.KINDNESS/CRUELTY
One is angry because he is doing badly ,
another - because his neighbor is doing well.
I. Babel
When it is impossible to be proud of one’s
victories, people begin to take pride in others’ defeats.
Contemporary Saying
If someone hits you on the face, offer him
another one.
Contemporary Saying
One is able to feel for a common misfortune
only if one also feels for a particular misfortune of a particular
person.
F. Dzerzhinsky
Sometimes people talk about the “beastly”
cruelty of man, but this is awfully unjust and offensive to the beasts;
no beast can ever be as cruel as man, as artfully, artistically cruel.
F. Dostoevsky
I an happy that I have kissed women,
Clutched wild flowers and in deep grass
lain,
And that beasts who are our younger
brothers,
I have never beaten, never slain.
S. Esenin
The kind man is not he who is capable of
doing good, but he who is incapable of doing evil.
V. Klyuchevsky
Some people turn into swine the minute they
are treated like people.
V. Klyuchevsky
Do you hear?!
Everyone, everyone,
Even the useless
must live.
We mustn’t, we mustn’t
Dig the graves
or kill.
V. Mayakovsky
Don’t ever, ever close your door,
But let the door stay open.
B. Okudjava
As soon as you load the guns
Everyone would want to shoot.
B. Okudjava
Cruel people do not recognize the voice of
their own time. Echo returns it to them in an exalted state.
V. Shklovsky
It is easy to be cruel. You only need not
to love.
V. Shklovsky
Don’t be too hasty to punish, be hasty to
forgive.
L. Tolstoy
Kindness is for the soul what health is for
the body; it is inconspicuous when you have it and it brings success to
every undertaking.
L. Tolstoy
In order to believe in kindness one must
first do kind deeds.
L. Tolstoy
Kindness by order is no kindness.
I. Turgenev
If you give everyone the right of way, you
won’t get very far.
V.Voinovich
38. KNOWLEDGE
Boundless, indeed, is this earth,
But nothing is its worth,
If you don’t notice anything.
B. Akhmadulina
Men make mistakes not because they think
they know when they do not know, but because they think others do not
know.
Sholom Aleichem
The way to fight with your faults is not to
notice them, stand above, and, perhaps, a bit to the side of them.
Contemporary Saying
Feelings precede knowledge; those who have
not felt the truth haven’t understood or known her.
V. Belinsky
Don’t hope to get the final answer,
You’ll never find it in this life.
A. Blok
Never brag of ignorance: ignorance is
impotence.
N. Chernyshevsky
We don’t know everything, but that’s not
everything.
Contemporary Saying
It is not enough to merely open man’s eyes.
It is also necessary to turn on the light.
Contemporary Saying
Tell me who I am, and it will be clear to
me who you are.
Contemporary Saying
A narrow specialist finds out more and more
about less and less, and so it goes until he knows everything about
nothing and nothing about everything.
Contemporary Saying
Some observe, others see.
Contemporary Saying
You can’t possibly know everything, but you
can always guess anything.
Contemporary Saying
At last, I found myself, but that turned
out to be a completely different person.
Contemporary Saying
The face is blurred
Seen eye to eye.
The great is only visible
At distance.
S. Esenin
The best thing one can do before the coming
of the Great Flood is to learn how to live under water.
Joke
They say that darkness is the absence of
light. But in perfect light one sees just as little as in perfect
darkness.
V. Lenin
If you want to make sure
that the earth is round,
Sit on your ass
And roll!
V. Mayakovsky
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing
something to be modest about my not knowing everything.
V. Nabokov
It is easier to find out a lot about many
than little about one.
S. Obraztsov
Don’t ask a blind man to point you the way.
Proverb
Noone can embrace the boundless.
K. Prutkov
Many things are incomprehensible to us not
because our comprehension is weak, but because those things are not
within the frames of our comprehension.
K. Prutkov
The sky, it cannot see its blue expanse.
The radiant, ice-capped mountain has no
chance
To see how regally it towers,
Nor can their beauty see the flowers.
S. Schipachev
On a day when the sun rises, there is no
need to remind the flowers to bloom.
V. Shklovsky
Everything visible to us is only a flash of
what cannot be visible to the eye.
V. Solovyev
Without knowing what I am, and why I am
here, life is impossible.
L. Tolstoy
The only thing that we know is that we know
nothing, and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
L. Tolstoy
Light will always be light, although a
blind man doesn’t see it.
L. Tolstoy
If there is a church, then, it could not be
visible to those who are inside it.
L. Tolstoy
He who knows his own self better than the
rest, respects himself the least.
L. Tolstoy
Just as it is impossible to approach an
object from all of its angles at the same time, it is also impossible
to understand the events in life from all of their angles.
L. Tolstoy
And they, they stretch out their necks,
And on their tippy-toes they stand.
In order to see further into life,
Just look over everybody’s necks.
V. Vysotsky
There is no sense in science or in thought,
When everywhere you look, life contradicts
them.
V.Vysotsky
39. LAUGHTER
Every fool has enough reasons to be sad,
and only a wiseman tears through the curtain of existence with laughter.
I. Babel
When you laugh at yourself, you always find
many like-minded people.
Contemporary Saying
If a man did not get offended at your joke,
that means that he has a sense of humor. If, however, he did get
offended, that means that he understood the joke.
Contemporary Joke
He laughs the best who did not understand
what other people are laughing at.
Contemporary Saying
If humor wasn’t understood, then, most
probably, it is satire.
Contemporary Saying
Laughter is a characteristic quality of
man; so is laughter with no reason.
Contemporary Saying
There is only one step from laughter to
tears; that’s why nothing is ever funny, although it could be.
Contemporary Saying
He laughs the best who laughs the last,
says the proverb. Yes, but the last one, somehow, never has the time to
laugh.
Contemporary Saying
If a man laughs, he is good.
F. Dostoevsky
Wisdom consists not in the search for
wisdom, but in the search for laughter. Precisely in the search, for,
unlike sadness, laughter does not lie on the surface, althougth eiither
everything in this world is already funny or it will become such.
N. Djin
I am suspicious of people who are always
gloomy and gray: either they are concealing something or they have an
eternally upset stomach.
A. Herzen
The happiest laughter is when you laugh at
someone who laughs at you.
V. Klyuchevsky
Laughter is the greatest nurse.
A. Lunacharsky
To continue laughing is easier than to stop
the laughter.
K. Prutkov
To fear laughter is to dread the truth.
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